By day, Jeanne Pelletier is a small-town girl toiling in obscurity at a stuffy Washington, D.C., law firm; by night, she's Zahira, the city's newest belly dancing sensation. When a blaze rips through the city's premier Middle Eastern nightclub and kills Jeanne's beloved belly dance teacher Yasmina, Jeanne is drawn into a deadly mystery. Soon, she's assembled a zany, crime-fighting urban family consisting of her obnoxious ex-CIA agent neighbor; her commune-dwelling, wild child best friend; and a sexy Scottish hacker bent on wooing the commitment-phobic Jeanne. But as Jeanne and her friends uncover a string of lovers and a web of family secrets stretching back to the Middle East, Jeanne is forced to confront a dark family secret of her own.